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A host of downtown Madison businesses and office buildings shut down Friday morning due to power outages that resulted from fires at two Madison Gas & Electric substations. Somehow, Maxwell Street Days on State Street came out unscathed.
Brady Judd, manager of Fontana Sports Specialties at 216 N. Henry St., just off State Street, says employees set up their outdoor displays at 7 a.m. and made the first sale by 7:30 a.m. “We are full steam ahead,” he said at 10:30 a.m. Judd says the store experienced a couple of power surges but never lost power completely.
One block away, on the 100 block of State Street, it was a different story. Ian’s Pizza tweeted out early that both its locations downtown would be closed. And Cinema Hair Studio, which is on the Capitol Square, sent out an email to customers that appointments had to be cancelled for the day. WORT 89.9 FM, at 118 S. Bedford St., announced on Twitter around 9:45 a.m. that the local community radio station was temporarily off-air (and its website offline) until it could restore a connection to its transmitter.
Traffic lights were out on the isthmus, slowing the morning commute. A motorist blared his horn at Baldwin and Williamson — and another motorist replied “What do you expect, buddy?”
The Madison Fire Department is investigating but noted in a news release that “the fires that occurred this morning at two MGE substations remain under investigation, but fire investigators believe the fire was not intentional.”
The first fire at 722 Main St. was reported at 7:50 a.m. and declared “knocked down” at 8:50 a.m. with no injuries. A second fire, at the MGE substation near East Campus Mall, was reported at 8:03 a.m. Nearby dorms were briefly evacuated. No injuries were reported at this fire either.
Public Health Madison & Dane County issued a statement at 9:29 a.m. that all businesses licensed by the department without back-up generators would need to close until power was restored. “This includes restaurants, swimming pools, tattoo and body piercing, hotels, and retail food stores,” the statement said. The department said the move was necessary to “protect the public health.”
Gov. Tony Evers told all non-essential employees working downtown to go home.
MGE posted on Facebook at 9 a.m. that the fire occurred at a substation containing equipment belonging to MGE and American Transmission Company. There was an explosion right before this video was taken. Power outages extended from the Yahara River to the west side of the Capitol Square. Approximately 13,000 customers in all lost power.
Despite today’s predicted temps in the high 90s, the utility said that there is “ no reason to believe the cause of the fire is due to excessive usage from today's high temperatures.”
The utility also said that it was working with ATC and the Madison Fire Department to determine the cause of the fire.